Studies On Consumer Response To Sales Promotion And Promotion Effectiveness

Sales promotion takes more and more important role in marketing mix for enterprises, and is emphasized more and more by marketers. What influences will various sales promotion techniques exert on consumer purchase behavior? Which sales promotion technique is most effective for achieving specific sales promotion objective? What benefits consumers mainly focus on in sales promotions? What factors influence consumer's cognition and affection towards sales promotion techniques? Deep research into these questions can provide marketers with directions regarding how to choose the most effective sales promotion technique for specific sales promotion objective and how to design sales promotion technique most effective under certain circumstances. Theoretically, there is rich sales promotion literature from consumer behavior perspectives, but still in lack of research literature that directly focuses on how sales promotion techniques affect consumer purchase behaviors under Chinese market circumstances. Contradictive research findings regarding comparing several sales promotion techniques based on their promotion effectivenss still exist in current research literature. In addition, there is still need for deep research into factors that affect promotion effectiveness of specific sales promotion technique. Based on joint consideration above, this paper reviews relevant theories and literature, researches into consumers' cognition, affection and behavioral intention under the framework of "stimulus-cognition-affection-conation", and discusses implications of the research findings for marketers.On the basis of reviewing relevant theories and literature, this paper builds a theoretical framework under perspective of consumer perception and behavior. In this theretical framework, sales promotion techniques directly affect consumer perceived sales promotion benefits and consumer perceived manipulation; consumer perceived sales promotion benefits and consumer manipulation perception jointly affect consumer's attitude towards sales promotion techniques, i.e. sales promotion attractiveness, which in turn determines consumer's purchase behavioral intention, and thus customer-based brand equity of the product under promotion; sales promotion techniques also affect perceived quality of the product under pomotion, and thus the brand equity of the product; meanwhile, sales promotion techniques exert influence on brand association of the product under promotion, and thus affect brand equity of the product.Consumers' perception and behavioral response towards sales promotion are affected by the environment where consumers live. This paper analyzes Chinese consumer market with respects to its economical and social environment, and the influence of the environment exert on consumers. On the supply part, Chinese consumer market has already evolved from seller market to buyer market, which renders sales promotion techniques more and more important for enterprises. On the demand part, deep changes in the demand characteristics, life styles, and consumption modes of urban residents have taken place; consumer consumption modes have changed from unitary mode with characteristics of "thrifty and following mainstream" to multidimensional modes which mix the characteristics of "value", "fasion", "brand", and "personalize", which means that consumers do not only prefer to those sales promotion techniques that provide monetary savings like price discount anymore; as for the differences between urban and rural consumer market, rural consumers mainly focus on utilitarian benefits, while urban consumers focus on both utilitarian benefits, and hedonical benefits as well as symbolic benefits, and the like should it be for the difference in consumers' preferences towards different sales promotion techniques between rural and urban consumers.According to research findings in previous literature, different sales promotion techniques have different effects on consumer purchase behaviors. There is till, however, in lack of research that directly interviews consumers in Chinese consumer market. This paper conducts a field survey on consumers' behavioral responses towards different sales promotion techniques and finds that, there are significant differences among different sales promotion techniques with regards to inducing consumers behavioral responses; the major role of gifts is to induce consumers to purchase earlier than planned, and foster consumers' loyalty towards the brand under promotion; the major role of sweepstakes is to foster consumers' loyalty towards the brand under promotion; the major role of price discounts is to promote consumers to purchase earlier than planned; for specific consumers' behavioral response, there are still significant differences in effectiveness among the four types of sales promotion techniques, overall speaking, price discounts are most effective while sweepstakes are least effective.There are inconsistent research findings regarding comparison of sales promotion effectiveness between coupons and sweepstakes in previous research literature. Some researchers argue that coupons are more effective than sweepstakes, while others argue that sweepstakes are more effective than coupons in sales promotion techniques. This paper has rsearched into this question. On the basis of prospect theory, this paper has proposed a promotion-value model, and derived several research hypotheses, which are all confirmed by two experimental studies. Results show that, the relative effectivenss of sweepstakes versus cash coupons is contingent on the design of sweepstakes, cash coupons are more effective than sweepstakes with medium or large winning probabilities, but less effective than sweepstakes with very small winning probabilities and prize of very high value; product characteristics is another moderator that provides another boundary condition for the relative effectiveness of cash coupons versus sweepstakes, for promoting products of high price sweepstakes with very small winning probabilities but prizes of very high value are more effective than cash coupons, for promoting products of low price there is no significant difference in effectiveness between cash coupons and sweepstakes with very small winning probabilities; consumer's attitude towards risk is also a moderator that determines the relative effectiveness of cash coupons versus sweepstakes with very smaill winning probabilities, for risk-prone consumers sweepstakes with very small winning probabilities are more effective than cash coupons, for risk-averse consumers cash coupons are more effective than sweepstakes with very small winning probabilities.Previous researchers have made extensive research into price discounts promotions. Nevertheless, there still lacks research regarding coparison of sales promotion effectiveness between dollar-based price discounts and percentage-based price discounts. This paper has delved into this question via two experimental studies and found that, more often dollar-based price discounts can elicit more consumer perceived value and higher consumer purchase intention than percentage-based price discounts; however, this relationship is moderated by calculation difficulty of price discounts and the price level of the product under promotion, the relevant advantage in sales promotion effectiveness of dollar-based price discounts over percentage-based price discounts will disappear when the price disounts are very easy for calculation, or when the product under promotion is of very low price; perceived value is full mediator in the relationship between price disount presentations and consumer purchase intention, i.e. price disount presentation affects consumer perceived value, which in turn affects consumer purchase intention.